It’s hard to overstate how much of a disaster Nest has been for Google

Last week, we learned that Google’s decision to buy Nest back in 2014 has been an unmitigated disaster. In short, Nest’s product portfolio has grown very slowly since its acquisition by Google and its revenues are way below expectations. Additionally, Nest CEO Tony Fadell sounds like a complete nightmare to work for and he’s shown that he’s not afraid to disparage a large number of former employees after they leave the company. In particular, Fadell absolutely ripped into several Dropcam employees who left the company not long after it was acquired by Nest by saying that they “were not as good as we’d hoped.”

“We pioneered one of the first hardware-service models in our industry with a 40%+ conversion rate paid subscription and better-than-Netflix churn — now a gold standard used by VCs looking for related investments,” he writes. “And we accomplished all of this while remaining a really great place to work.”

He then points out that Dropcam employees haven’t been alone in fleeing Nest in recent years and he notes that “according to LinkedIn, total attrition to date at Nest amounts to nearly 500 people, which suggests that we were not alone in our frustrations.” He also says that the “~50 Dropcam employees who resigned” from Nest “did so because they felt their ability to build great products being totally crushed.”